PORT TOWNSEND — The winners of a Sound Experience scholastic video contest got what they had asked for as they sailed on the schooner Adventuress on Thursday.
“What are we wishing and hoping to see?” said Chimacum Elementary School students in the winning video, “An Adventuress Chantey,” which was set to the tune of the “SpongeBob SquarePants” theme.
“We want to learn science and marine biology,” the students said.
The students in Mitch Brennan’s third-, fourth- and fifth-grade class were treated to both topics, presented in a playful way, as they claimed their prize for winning the online contest and took a three-hour educational tour though calm waters in Port Townsend Bay under sunny skies.
“I won’t have trouble remembering all we’ve learned because they made it really fun, and I tend to remember fun stuff,” said student Halli Trafton.
The students, who beat out five other contestants to win a trip on the 98-year-old historic tall ship, received a crash course in seafaring.
They rotated through 11-minute sessions about five subjects: plankton, sea wildlife, nautical skills, navigation and the watershed.
The video competition, “From Land to Sea — The Adventuress Video Project,” was launched to build interest for Sound Experience’s youth programs aboard the tall ship and to build relationships with the community on the Olympic Peninsula.
The contest encouraged youths from Jefferson, Clallam and Kitsap counties to answer, in video format, “Why do YOU want to sail aboard Adventuress?”
The six videos were posted to a YouTube site where the public could cast its votes.
The Chimacum students’ winning video was viewed more than 900 times — twice as many as the runner-up.
In it, the students shout out call-and-response sequences two at a time while wearing construction paper disguises.
They speak eagerly, sometimes stumbling over the lines that are subtitled on screen.
Brennan said the video was a rough cut that the class intended to reshoot, but at deadline, one of the students was absent, so the class submitted what it had.
“We decided we’d rather have a rough video where all the kids were included than a polished one where someone was missing,” he said.
On Thursday, all 27 students in the class showed up for the trip.
The class separated into five groups, The Sharp Sea Lions, the Marley Crabs, Awesomeness, the Surf Seals and SpongeBob SquarePants, choosing these names on the fly.
Instructor Megan Addison said students on the ship are confronted with a lot of material at once, but some of it will stick since they are having fun while they are learning.
If the field trip took place during the middle of the school year, there would be time to reinforce the lessons, but today is the last day of school.
To guarantee at least some retention, Brennan will ask each kid to write a thank-you note to the Adventuress crew describing what they learned and keep those letters on file.
Midway on the cruise, the class was told that some visitors had arrived on the boat and should be welcomed.
But they appeared to be somewhat dangerous.
In a short, improvisational play, two crew members portrayed aliens sent to Earth to retrieve limpets to sell for a large sum on their home planet.
Other crew members portrayed the limpet and other sea animals who resisted the relocation, forcing the aliens to return home empty-handed.
The students got the message.
Asked what they had learned after the show, they shouted, nearly in unison, “We must protect the environment, and everything is connected.”
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.
bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
